Soft tissues, such as ligaments, tendons, and muscles, are attached to a large portion of the human skeleton. In particular, many ligaments and tendons are attached to the bones which form joints, such as shoulder and knee joints. A variety of injuries and conditions require attachment or reattachment of a soft tissue to bone and/or surrounding tissue. For example, when otherwise healthy tissue has been torn away from a bone, surgery is often required to reattach the tissue to the bone to allow healing and a natural reattachment to occur.
One example of otherwise healthy tissue being torn away from a bone is a rotator cuff tear in which a shoulder rotator cuff tendon is partially or completely torn from a humerus. Surgery to reattach the rotator cuff tendon to the humerus has a failure rate as high as 40%. One way that has been developed to help reduce this failure rate is to add blood to the repair site to aid in and improve the healing process, as blood includes healing factors. One method to add blood is to decorticate or otherwise scuff the bone having the tendon attached thereto to induce some bleeding in the bone. Another method to add blood is to create microfracture holes in the bone having the tendon attached thereto to cause blood to “weep” from the microfracture holes. However, the blood clots within a short amount of time after the decortication, scuffing, or microfracture, typically within minutes or hours, so there is a limited amount of blood added to the repair site, which may limit the added blood's healing effects, and the blood is only added for a short time after the bone is decorticated, scuffed, or microfractured during the performance of the surgical procedure, which may not promote long term healing.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved methods and devices for methods, systems, and devices for blood flow.